Adria, Shaun, Thad

Shaun on Sideline

Shaun on Sideline

ELECTION 2006 WRAP: ‘BIG DEAL’

All the sportscasters have proclaimed a massive victory for the D-team and a crushing defeat for their differently colored rivals. From a pure numbers perspective, the result was somewhere between a solid win and a right blow-out. Pres Bush himself called it a ‘thumping’, and were he an English football fan he might’ve even called it a ‘spanking’ or a ‘drubbing’.

But in American politics, as in other team sports, the numbers only tell part of the story. And in the 2006 Vote Bowl the rest of the story offers little comfort for fans of the D-team – and even less for the neutrals.

[1] Too little, too late. The R-team’s basic approach to the management of affairs of state had hardly changed between ’04 and ’06. Why the needless delay in accountability? Any D-team fan’s pleasure with the apparently massive victory must be tempered by the knowledge that the last 2 years cost hundreds of billions of dollars, tens of thousands of lives [Iraqis count too, no?], large portions of the US Constitution, and the city of New Orleans.

[2] Big, ugly picture. Given the historic incompetence and mendacity of the current R-administration, the narrowness of the D-team’s majority is baffling. Sure, they took 6 of 7 ‘competitive’ Senate races – but, wait a minute, only 7 races were competitive? That’s 7% of the total and only 20% of the races that were being run this cycle. The D-team gained 30 seats in the House, which is 7-8% of the whole and 14% of the R-team’s previous share. A pro-D national ground-swell? Hardly.

[3] Electoral accountability? Ha! They say the ’06 election was a referendum on the Pres, but the R-teamers who suffered at the polls were precisely those least ideologically friendly to Bush. Rep John Sullivan from Tulsa is an R-teamer a la Barbara Stanwyck in ‘Double Indemnity’ [‘straight down the line’]: a real Bush rubber-stamp. He won 2 to 1 in a town whose tourist board bills it [far from absurdly, let me assure the coastal reader] as ‘Comfortably Cosmopolitan’. Other Bush Republicans won handily around the country, esp in the South. Meanwhile, the lost seats came at the expense of moderate Republicans in the Midwest and Northeast. One of them, Lincoln Chaffee, admitted he didn’t even vote for his team’s candidate at the last election. The electorate didn’t punish the R’s for bad ideas or tyrannical rule; they punished candidates whom they couldn’t tell from their rivals except that they were dumb enough to wear the currently unfashionable color.

In short, even the most sanguine D-die-hards must be worried by the available answers to 3 nagging questions: Why did we win 2 years late? Why does 40% of the electorate staunchly support the ‘worst Pres in history’? Why are we ecstatic over marginal gains in races between indistinguishable moderates wearing differently colored jerseys?

But, hey, the D’s are still a fat and happy minority compared to the neutral masses. And that’s the whole point of the politics game, isn’t it, D’s?

For the neutrals, the answers to the above questions must be genuinely disturbing. They all boil down to this: American politics is an end in itself, not a means for dealing with reality; an amusing round of tailgating, scoreboard-watching, and bragging rights bearing little relation to popular control over collective destinies.

ELECTION 2006 NOT-SO-SPECIAL

PREDICTIONS: There’s been a lot of hype around the expected gains of the D-team, but in the end the results of the 2006 elections will conform to usual pattern that’s been established in the Rove era [i.e. 2000, 2002, 2004]: on-the-ground mobilization and behind-the-scenes chicanery will help the R-team dramatically over-perform. I expect the R’s to keep the Senate with a couple votes to spare and to limit the anticipated D-advantage in the House to single digits.

VOTE FRAUD has been a permanent fixture of mass elections and if anything will only become easier to perpetrate and harder to detect in the era of so-called ‘e-voting’. As long as the party fixers and the computer programmers can keep their pacts of silence, the fraudulent vote-counts by which our politics lives and breathes should be impossible to find and fix. The beauty of the 2-part Rovian approach to electoral politics – let’s call them OTG [‘on-the-ground’] and BTS [‘behind-the-scenes’] – is that they are for evidentiary purposes indistiguishable: the illegitimate BTS stuff can be masked by the legitimate OTG stuff. Thus tomorrow’s ‘surprising’ R-team victories will be attributed entirely to OTG, and whoever mentions the possibility of BTS will be roundly ridiculed. For what it’s worth, I’m sure the D-team fixers are trying their best to do the same – with what success remains to be seen. Indeed many of the D-giants of the last century, especially JFK and LBJ, got their power from fraudulent elections. This may be disturbing but it’s certainly not new. Don’t worry, fellow citizens, mass elections are still what they were designed to be and have always been: a spectator sport which utilizes our highest civic virtues, i.e. booing and cheering, and pushes aside those obsolete qualities that used to be known by quaint names like ’self-government’ and ‘popular control’.

MODERATE REPUBLICANS will soon be placed on the Endangered Species list, if the pundits are to be believed. I doubt as many of them will in fact lose their seats as is supposed [see above], but I must say there is no force in American politics which has done more in recent years to both effect and deserve its own extinction. A long and honorable tradition in American political culture has been reduced to a gooey pre-vertebral status in the soup of our current partisan-duopolitan corruption. We’re not only talking about the likes of Tom Reynolds, Mark Foley’s pal in upstate New York who may lose his House seat. More to the point are the likes of Sen McCain. I thought it was pretty bad when the moderate Republicans held their noses and pretended [so I thought] to be good team-players in 2004 in the face of pretty obvious evidence of incompetence and usurpation. Now that this has gone from pretty obvious to in-your-face bloody obvious, McCain and his ilk have responded in the only partisan-logical fashion: they’ve gone from holding their noses to breathing in the stench and belching it back out even fouler. Moderate Republicanism can no longer offer anything in terms of political principle: it’s just another version of pandering to public opinion while making disgraceful compromises [e.g. the recent torture bill], all in order to get and keep power. In fact there is no better demonstration of the corruptive power of the American party duopoly than Sen McCain, who briefly struggled against but now grovels before the nexus of campaign cash and public-relations expertise which the 21st-century political party has made the basis of its power.

GEOGRAPHY LESSONS: Does any sane person who looks at the US House map come to the conclusion that Congressional districts are designed to ‘represent’ things that could fairly be described as ‘places’? My hometown of Austin TX is now, thanks to the Republican legislature of the state of Texas and the US Supreme Court, parcelled out among 4 different districts stretching as far as 200 miles away, some of them including chunks of other cities like Houston and San Antonio. District 10, which I [and every other Austin resident] used to vote in, has been redrawn so that Congressional Quarterly magazine now describes it as ‘east-central and eastern Austin, western Houston suburbs, Brenham’. As even someone with only rudimentary knowledge of Texas geography can tell, that is not a ‘place’. If we really don’t believe that places matter anymore, why don’t we just drop the whole charade and make all Congressional seats at-large – every single American voter votes for every single Representative? While we’re at it, we may as well reduce the number of Congressmen. Only one hitch: what can we do about this 1787 Constitution thing, which the Supreme Court relies on to ratify the basest absurdities?

Mex fut update: home stretch!

BIENVENIDO … DE NUEVO

After a plenty-long absence I’m here to tell you that APERTURA ’06 is poised for a rousing finish in its last 2 rounds. Parity has been the theme of this ‘temporada’ – unbelievably, no fewer than 13 [out of 18] teams are within mathematical reach [i.e. 6 pts] of the top of the table! Because of group-wise qualification for the Liguilla [play-offs; see more below], no single team has yet assured itself of a spot in the last 8. On the international stage it’s been a banner term for futbol mexicano, with 2 of the last 4 in the Copa Sudamericana [South American Cup]. Pachuca [Clausura ’06 champions] face Atletico Paranaense of Brazil while current ‘superlider’ [table-toppers] Toluca have drawn Colo Colo of Chile. These 2-legged semi-finals kick off in a couple weeks.

There’s not much point looking very closely at the current state of the ‘tabla general’ [full table], since it’s fit for sardines at the moment. But the group tables will determine who makes the Liguilla.

Grp 1              pts       Grp 2              pts       Grp 3              pts

1 Cruz Azul    26        1 Pachuca        24        1 Toluca          26

2 Chivas          23        2 Monterrey    23        2 America       25

3 Atlas            23        3 San Luis       22        3 Pumas          23

4 Jaguares       22        4 Atlante         21        4 Morelia        18

5 Queretaro     20        5 Veracruz      20        5 Tigres           11

6 Necaxa         18        6 Tecos           12        6 Santos          10

The top 2 finishers in each group qualify for the last 8, plus 2 wild cards. Santos, Tigres, and Tecos are completely out of the running and thus worrying only about picking up points against next term’s ‘descenso’ [relegation] fight. Morelia and Necaxa have only slender hopes of making the Liguilla, since their group rivals might easily finish above them even if they win their last 2 matches. For everyone else, it’s all to play for.

The prime object of interest, then, is the ‘horario’ [schedule]:

Jornada 16                             Jornada 17

SLU-PUM                               QUE-ATS

JAG-MON                              CRU-SAN

ATE-AME                              MON-TOL

VER-CHV                               PCH-ATE

MOR-TEC                              CHV-JAG

TIG-QUE                                NEC-VER

ATS-NEC                               PUM-TIG

TOL-CRU                               TEC-SLU

SAN-PCH                               AME-MOR

Among the top 4 gunning for ‘superlider’, the massive fixture is obviously this Sun’s matinee performace, #1 Toluca hosting #2 Cruz Azul [noon central time, Univision]. But in fact the other 2 can’t be counted out, for America and Pachuca have easier schedules, against teams in the bottom half of the table.

In short, every single match is massive – how many leagues around the world can say that about their final 2 weeks? Check out SoccerTV for broadcast schedules.

I’ll close with some comments on 2 teams I’ve followed particularly closely this year.

SANTOS: The Torreon side have been sentimental favorites with me on account of their neighborly ‘nortenyo’ [northern] location in Coahuila province, bordering my home state of Texas. [And, bizarrely, I used to date a girl who [1] was born in Coahuila and [2] bore the surname of Santos!] But the Guerreros have been well nigh the worst team in the league this temporada. They’ve been stuck to the bottom of the table all season and only got their 1st win last week, Jornada 15! They were on the road in Mexico City, playing Atlante, and held an improbable 2-0 lead until the 87th minute. Then the probable re-asserted itself: they gave away 2 goals in the space of 3 minutes. But substitute Peralta headed home a cross in stoppage time to grab all 3 desperately needed points – ‘que milagro’! Notwithstanding that miracle, Santos have shown a magical tendency to defend poorly on days they were attacking well, and to lose their cutting edge in attack on [rare] days they were defending well. Next term they will need to get the house in order to stave off descenso.

PUMAS: I’ve no particular feeling for this classic club from the capital, but bloody Univision [the only Spanish channel I can get at home] seems to show them in their single Sun noon slot every other bloody week. So I’m quite familiar with the side. They’re in the odd position of battling quite creditably for a Liguilla place this term while still being in danger next term of descenso, since relegation in Mexico is based not on points accumulated in a single season but rather on average points per match over the last 3 seasons. Pumas’ 3-year average is still low enough, despite their current good form, to put them only 1 place above Santos. They have quality, though, as shown in their key win at home to Morelia last weekend. Out of nowhere, Scocco played a brilliant 30-yard diagonal ball behind the defense which Oscar Gonzalez controlled and smashed into the corner with his left foot. Scocco is one of many very good Argentine players in Mexico, but at only 21 years old he has a chance to shine on bigger stages in future. He and his midfield companion Leandro, a slick left-footed Brazilian, give Pumas a creative edge in the final third, and this team could continue to rise if coach Ferretti can find some consistency on his forward line.

See y’all next week with a report on the match of the temporada: Toluca vs Cruz Azul.

The Futility of Senate Reform, and of Manchester City’s Travels

The world has been waiting with bated breath for the resumption of our ongoing debate on the merits of reforming the United States Senate. In the past week, I’ve had to revise my position on this, owing to a simple read of the Constitution of the United States. Article V, on the Amendmenet procedure, states that “no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.” That pretty much rules out schemes suggested in my previous post. Of course it also raises a more fundamental question:

Tartan Army On the March; Pigtail Nation Comes to Richmond

The European leagues are off this weekend as attention turns to the international scene. Does it really matter that England were held to a draw in European qualifying by Macedonia? I think not, except that it gives the journos over there more to complain about.

I confined myself to viewing just one of the Euro qualifiers, and I picked well. Rejuvenated Scotland survived a first half French onslaught,

Bloated reply to ‘reform the senate’

Lately it’s been all POL. Not quite ready to give ground, TW – not yet.

Back to our 3 areas of dispute:

[1] Urban/rural REPRESENTATION. ‘Representation’ in congessional seats doesn’t necessarily amount to effective representation of people’s real interests. The 2 most effective kinds of interest in American politics

Reform the Senate!

I’m not sure the world needs another blogger comment about Joey Barton baring his “backside” (the English euphemism for what I prefer equally euphemistically to call “rear end”) for about 5 seconds to Everton supporters in the wake of Manchester City’s late equalizer at Goodison on Saturday. Plus, I was away in Montana for the weekend, so I have no additional insights on the weekend beyond what I could glean from the highlights shows, other than that I feel sorry for those